A Turnabout Intruder
by Of Glorious Plumage
Summary: How does the Nexus work? What happens if two different Kirks try to share the same body? Can the happiness of one Spock come only with the sorrow of the second? Rated for mild swearing and slash.
1. Revelations, Kirk, Prime

_A/N: So I should probably have posted this as a ST:XI and ST:TOS crossover. But. I didn't really feel like it. And it will be set in the ST:XI universe after the second chapter, so..._

_By the way, I don't really own this. At all. I have a Spock action figure, and a Kirk action figure, and nothing else. Don't sue, just review. (Makes puppy-eyes)_

* * *

Revelations

Inside the Nexus

"…"

"James Tiberius Kirk."

"Hmm?"

"It is you, isn't it? The captain, the admiral, the hero of the galaxy?"

"Just Jim right now, actually….Who are you?"

"People call me Guinan."

"…"

"…"

"How much do you know about this place?"

"How much do you need to know?"

"…Must you speak in riddles?"

"Must you ask such an idiotic question?"

"What?! It wasn't idiotic!"

"I'll speak the way I want. Now, what do you want to know?"

"Fine. Fine, I'll play by your rules. My first question is 'Why am I still in this goddamned _thing_?!'"

"The Nexus?"

"Yeah, whatever. He, the future captain – John Luke whoever – Picard – helped get me out. I was _out_. And then…"

"_Jean-Luc_ told you about the Nexus, and you left it, and then you died."

"I did. I remember it…I remember _dying_. The pain and the blackness and that horrible, horrible moment when…."

"When you what?"

"Nothing."

"If it were nothing, you would not mind talking about it."

"Well, it wasn't nothing, but I'm not going to talk about it."

"…"

"Fine, goddamn you. That horrible, horrible moment when I realized that Spock was alive and in that universe and he was _my_ Spock and not a crazy one with a beard and then I realized that I was dying, dead, and…Goddamn…It was…Ugh, this is so -"

"Do not say embarrassing. It is not a sign of weakness to cry."

"…Give me a moment."

"Of course. We have, after all, all the time in the universes."

"…"

"Do you mind if I ask you a question, Admiral?"

"Go ahead. And it's Jim."

"When you say 'Spock', you mean your first officer? The half-Vulcan? The current ambassador to Romulus?"

"That's who I mean."

"So you two were…?"

"The Vulcan term is _t'hy'la_. Friend, brother, lover. We shared a mental bond, among other things."

"Oh."

"Please don't tell me you're homophobic."

"I'm not. It's just – it makes so much sense that I don't understand how I never thought of it before."

"So…he's on Romulus?"

"I think. It would take too long to explain."

"What happened to all the time in the universes?"  
"Do you want me to answer your original question?"

"Yes."

"Then don't ask questions like that."

"…Fine. But…how long has it been since we started talking?"

"Seconds. Eons. The time it takes for a galaxy to be born and the time it takes for a star to burn to dust."

"That's very poetic."

"The point is that time is fluid within the Nexus and the Nexus is fluid within time."

"Huh?"

"Weren't you supposed to be intelligent?"

"Only if you make sense."

"All right, I'll try again. I think the fact that time really has no meaning inside the Nexus is simple. The other part of that is that the Nexus itself disregards the concept of time in the 'real' world. It can travel through time, space, and dimensions. It can be tracked in one galaxy, and exist in another one at the exact same time. It can cross the borders between alternate realities. There is only one of it, but it can be in millions of different places at the same time."

"Okay. But why am I still here if I'm dead?"

"For the same reason that I am currently serving drinks on the _Enterprise-D_. The Nexus keeps a bit of our essence, or soul, or whatever you call it -"

"_Katra. _It's a Vulcan term."

"The Nexus keeps a bit of our _katra_, so even if we leave it physically, and die physically, we are still in it. You _are _dead. And you _are _still here. At the same time."

"So I could leave it again if I wanted to?"

"Technically, yes. But why would you want to? The Nexus can give you anything you desire, and if you were to make it back to the real world, you wouldn't have a body to inhabit. You would be a ghost."

"The Nexus can't give me my bond with Spock – I don't know why. It can give me a Spock, just like it can give me an Annette. But it can't make that bond."

"Is that so?"

"Yup."

"…There might be a way for you to get out."

"Really?"

"If there is a body – in any universe – that is suitable for inhabitation, you could enter it."

"Suitable?"

"Empty."

"As in…?"

"Comatose, perhaps. Brain dead. And it would have to be your body, or at least the body of another you."

"Ah."

"You're going to try it, aren't you?"

"Of course I am. Thanks for your help, Guinan."


	2. Sorrow and Black Holes, Spock, Prime

_A/N: The plot starts after this chapter! Yay!!!!! _

_I, Of Glorious Plumage, make a general disclaimer._

Sorrow and Black Holes

Prime Universe (Romulus) and Alternate Universe (Delta Vega)

"_Meanwhile, Spock would remain on Romulus, working toward the day when Romulus and Vulcan, the worlds so long kept sundered, could be unified once more."_

_~J. Sherman & S. Shwartz, "Blood Sacrifice", __Tales of the Dominion War_

----------------

He grieved. It was not a Vulcan thing to do, but he was also a human, and living among the emotional Romulans.

The grief was decades – almost a century – old. But it never faded, and never would. To feel the death of a bondmate once was difficult enough. To feel it twice was…traumatic.

Traumatic was an understatement.

He did not hide his grief, but he did not let it rule his life. He became accustomed to it sometime during the third decade (the third decade, seventh month, and first week, to be precise) after Jim Kirk's second death. He realized that the aching loneliness in his heart was the equivalent of a chronic migraine: it hurts, and it throbs, and nothing can heal it, and sometimes it gets to the point where you have to curl up in the darkness and submit to the pain, but on most days you can relegate it to the dark recesses of the mind and ignore it.

The Romulans respected him for it. He was a Vulcan unashamed of emotions and therefore almost Romulan himself. They also had highly respected Captain Kirk, the Federation scum who had tricked them out of a cloaking device and schemed his way out of situations involving the _Enterprise _and quite a few warbirds in the Neutral Zone. They were happy to negotiate with Spock.

The negotiations were even progressing well. Romulus realized the threat of the Dominion, and realized that allying with the Federation would save them both. A treaty was underway. Most people were even optimistic.

Until the supernova. The one Spock said he could fix. The one that destroyed Romulus. The one that led him to getting sucked into a black hole along with the _Narada_, a Romulan mining vessel captained by the mentally instable Nero. Yes._ That _supernova.

----------

Spock grieved. For Jim, for Vulcan, for Romulus. Even for Nero.

Spock grieved. And then he met Jim Kirk. It wasn't _his _Jim, but it was _a _Jim, and suddenly Spock had no time to grieve. He was too busy getting Jim back to the _Enterprise_ and plotting to emotionally compromise another version of himself and dealing with Scotty's little green friend and….

Spock's heart had maybe, finally, started to heal. And all it took was the destruction of two planets and a quick hop through a black hole.


	3. Falling to Oblivion

_A/N - DISCLAIMER!!!!! (Insert one here.)_

_So, I never really liked people who beg for reviews (although some of them are extremely funny about it and I have to respect them for that), but...Here I am, asking you for a bit of feedback. I've been expirimenting with my writing style and I was just wondering how you guys feel about it. Is it good? Bad? Beyond bad? Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings - if you don't tell me what's wrong, I'll never be able to fix it._

Falling to Oblivion

Alternate Universe

The away mission was supposed to be relatively safe; it was one of the first that the _Enterprise _was assigned to. A sizable faction of the Admiralty wanted to throw them into a five-year mission right away (Captain Kirk thinks it's because they're jealous of his sheer awesomeness and wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible, Commander Spock pointed out that Starfleet was stretched so thin by the destruction the _Narada _caused that it was logical to put all available ships to work immediately), but Admiral Pike, through methods unknown and maybe slightly not-quite-legal, convinced them to ease the _Enterprise _into things.

For two months after the horror of Vulcan's destruction and the general mayhem caused by crazy time-traveling Romulans, the _Enterprise _was in spacedock, getting repaired. Montgomery Scott, though not officially assigned to her at that point, could nonetheless be found working on her incessantly (which might or might not have been a way for him to avoid the wrath of Admiral Archer, who still missed his beloved beagle, Porthos). In fact, his constant presence around the engines led the younger and more impressionable engineers (and maybe a few of the older, jaded ones, too, though they would never admit it) to believe that Scotty had, at some point, perfected the science of human cloning, made a few copies of himself, and set them up in shifts so he could literally work around the clock.

Jim Kirk, meanwhile, was busy placating the powers-that-be within Starfleet and the Federation (not that he used the adjective 'placating'; it made it seem as if he were kissing-ass – rather, he was 'convincing those crusty wankers that I should totally be captain'). It was true that he saved Earth and was generally brilliant (in his own opinion, at least), but it was through direct insubordination against Acting-Captain Spock; there was also the question of whether or not he should have been on the ship in the first place, and if Doctor McCoy should be brought up on charges of assisting a stowaway. And, of course, there was the original question of 'Did Cadet Kirk cheat on the Kobayashi Maru test and should he be punished?' Spock ended up dropping all the charges he made, but the Admiralty was tenacious and, like a particularly hungry piranha feasting on the succulent flesh of a fat tourist who fell overboard on a tour of the Amazon, was more than happy to drag out the trial.

Those two months were also difficult on Spock, not that he would ever acknowledge that fact. His mother was dead. His home-world was a black hole. An alternate version of himself was pressuring him to remain in Starfleet and on the _Enterprise_, specifically. His romantic relationship with Nyota Uhura was slowly eroding as they both discovered that they were not as compatible as they thought (they were still friends – perhaps even closer together than they had ever been – but it was still a hard change to work through). The only positive thing in Spock's life was renewed relationship with his father.

It was hard for Spock. But he was not depressed. No. To be depressed or even merely saddened would be blatantly, illogically, horrifically, thoroughly un-Vulcan. So he was not depressed. At all.

------------

In a twist of fate, or a twisting of arms, courtesy of Christopher Pike, those two months ended on a very happy note, like the perfect conclusion to a fairy-tale (a sanitized fairy-tale, of course – one of the ones Disney did, not the one where the Little Mermaid committed suicide and Snow White tortured the Evil Queen and the Three Bears had Goldilocks bacon with their porridge). Glorious and proud, the _Enterprise_ flew off on her first mission: protecting ships of Vulcan refugees as they went to the new colony. It was boring, safe, a milk-run, and followed by a few more missions similar to it.

Eventually, the nature of the missions intensified. The idea was that by the time the _Enterprise_ went on a five-year mission, her crew would be prepared for it. But the mission where it all went wrong was supposed to be perfectly safe. The planet the away-team was beaming down to was so safe that not even Dr. McCoy had any objections to it and was more than happy about Jim accompanying the team.

"It would get the kid out of my hair for a few hours," he told Spock when the half-Vulcan questioned his abnormal compliance. "Won't have to deal with him and his 'Hey, Bones!' this and 'Look, Bones!' that. Goddamn. I hate that nickname."

The planet in question was uninhabited and possessed no geographical features such as cliffs or active volcanoes that could be a potential source of danger. It was nothing more than a big, nearly flat, sphere of diamond (the fact that it was made of diamond was the reason why a team was to be sent down there to take close-range readings) with an atmosphere and a few large puddles the scientists called 'non-saline liquid-water bodies', or, in common speech, lakes. Therefore, it was a total mystery as to _how_, precisely, the entire away team managed to fall into a deep canyon a mere fifteen minutes after beam-down.

Three members of the party died during the fall. The three of them, through some quirk of cosmic coincidence, were wearing red shirts. The other four in the party suffered a variety of injuries. Lieutenant Miller only had a fractured leg and moderate bruising and was able to comm for immediate beam-up with medical standing by. Ensigns Engels and Durrell were lacerated, bruised, and concussed, with various broken limbs. Captain Kirk was unconscious, a nasty contusion on the side of his head seeping blood.

-----------

McCoy was slightly worried when Jim didn't wake up when he was supposed to. But, he reasoned, Jim always had odd reactions to modern medicine. He would probably spring up in an hour or two and complain that the hyposprays were making him leak again.

The worry intensified when Jim would. not. wake. up.

Bones started rerunning some scans.

-----------

Three hours later, the doctor was forced to confront the fact that Jim Kirk was comatose and nothing he did was having any affect. For a moment, he stared numbly at his friend's inert form. With a heavy heart and a strong desire for stronger alcohol, he called for Spock and Doctor M'Benga. The hobgoblin would have to take over the ship and M'Benga would have to take over sickbay as Bones threw himself into research and drink, searching for a way to save his friend and drown his hopelessness.

----------

One anxious, miserable week later, in one of the wee hours of the morning when sickbay was quiet and barely staffed, Jim Kirk opened his eyes and slowly, feeling every stiff muscle, sat up.

"Well, this is a bit different from _my_ sickbay," he muttered to himself, "newer almost. Whiter. But it will do." He looked at himself, explored his own mind. "Yes!" The exclamation was a bit louder than he intended, and he was aware that the nurse on duty was hurrying towards him, but how could he not celebrate? He wasn't in a sparkly shirt, he was young, and – best of all – Spock, his Spock, was somewhere in this universe.


	4. Waking, Kirk

_There is no excuse for my scary-long absence from writing, but I ask all of you who are still reading to accept my apology for it. I do want to say, though, that I will never, __**never**__ actually abandon a story. I might ignore it for a few months, or write a crap ending because writer's block crushes me, but I will never leave it without an ending at all._

_ Anyway, thank you to everyone who continued to support me through my MIA – you know who you are, you left reviews._

_ (General disclaimer can be inserted __**here**__)_

Waking

Alternate Universe

It's a miracle from whatever deity or deities might be out there, a fortuitous quirk of fate, Karma's reward for some good deed he forgot he did. It's a small thing, this quirk, this gift, and can be expressed in three words:

Bones is there.

Jim knows that the only reason he inhabits the body he's in now, the body that belongs to some other Jim Kirk, is that the other Jim Kirk's consciousness is gone. Jim knows the other Jim Kirk was comatose, brain-dead. Jim knows that's a serious medical problem. Jim knows that, in his universe, his Bones would be by his side, however responsive or numb or twitching or comatose his side happened to be, no matter what if he had a "serious medical problem".

Jim knows that Bones' near immediate (and he would swear that it was so immediate, it was almost like the man had transported himself) arrival at his side means that whatever universe he is in, the other Jim Kirk and the other Len McCoy are as good of friends as he and his own McCoy were.

Jim knows this is a good thing.

His certainty in that fact diminishes a bit when the other man, younger than he remembers his Bones ever being, and looking almost as wearied despite that, simply gapes instead of expressing any deep and profound joy he might feel.

(Not that Jim had ever really seen Bones express any sort of deep and profound joy towards him in his own universe – the closest he got was gentle, amused sarcasm instead of caustic, annoyed sarcasm – and maybe Jim was hoping for too much but it had been a damn long time since he had seen his best friend, any version of his best friend.)

Standing there, with his mouth open and eyes wide, the doctor looks like a fish, specifically an old-fashioned Terran goldfish, and Jim is about to tell him that (and so what if it's more important that he tell the doctor that he's actually a time-traveling, dimension-hopping, body-snatching version of the Jim Kirk he knows?) when he's interrupted.

_Who are you? What the hell have you done to me?_

"What?" Jim doesn't see where the voice comes from.

McCoy recovers himself then, snaps his mouth shut and his eyes back into their eyelids. "Jim…" and _his _voice is noticeably his, and obviously comes from him, but lacks the spirit Jim knows from his own universe's Bones, "Kid, what the hell happened to your eyes?"


	5. Windows to the Soul, Kirk

_Please don't expect two updates at once again – I'm not that cool. But this part wanted to be written, and it really doesn't fit in with the other chapter._

Windows to the Soul

Kirk, Prime and Alternate

His eyes are _blue_ hazel, _exactly like his dad's_ the only thing he inherited from his mom's side of the family in terms of looks.

It makes his _mom cry_ dad laugh, because he looks almost exactly like George Kirk, _especially with those blue, blue eyes, and that makes it so much worse for her_ except for the eyes and that's a joke to his dad:

"_I see him when you look at me. Don't look at me! DON'T LOOK AT ME, GEORGE!"_

"I see my darling Winona when you look at me. No matter what, you'll always have your mom with you, Jimmy."

But there was a time he wanted _he had always wanted_ different colored eyes. It was _every day of his life, every time he looked in a mirror, every time someone looked at him and only saw George Kirk_ when he was on Tarsus IV. Governor Kodos believed in eugenic superiority as described by Adolf Hitler in the mid-twentieth century: blonde hair and blues eyes. Jim had the blonde hair, but his_ blue eyes made him feel sick all over again; he didn't deserve to live simply because he had his father's eyes and the group of kids he was trying to protect had_ hazel eyes marked him as a target to be eliminated. It would have been easier if he had blue eyes – he could have snuck into the camps and hidden in the open, and the people would have given him the food that he needed to keep the kids alive. But he has brown eyes, so he _avoided the camps, the small groups of people deemed worthy because any association with them, no matter what food he could get out of it, made him feel slimy, his whole self defined, as it had always been, by the color of his eyes._

It's mostly a small thing _the one thing he can never forget_, the color of his eyes. Usually he forgets it _sometimes he can push it to the back of his mind_, until someone says something. It's generally something inconsequential _that sends him spiraling into self-loathing for the rest of the day_ like "Wow, Captain, your shirt matches your eyes **and** your hair," which makes him laugh, silently of course, at his less-than-genius yeoman or "_Wow, Captain, you __**do**__ look a lot like your dad."_

And then there was the wonderful _horrible _day Spock told him that he found the _damnable _color of Jim's eyes to be _"aesthetically pleasing"_. It's Spock's way of saying "sexy" and Jim _retreated, his emotions in a turmoil, and avoided his first officer, giving cold shoulders and icy stares for no reason he could articulate _smiled as gently as possible until Spock_ backed off, stopped trying to make even small overtures of friendship, like inviting Jim over for games of chess, and reverted back to their original working relationship, that is to say cold and distant _took a step closer and hesitantly reached for Jim's hand with his own and Jim, knowing the meaning of the gesture, leaned in to kiss his XO in the Human way.


End file.
